The Middle East is on the brink of its fourth war. debkafile reports. Egypt has massed large-scale ground and air forces in the Western Desert, preparing to capture eastern Libya – Cyrenaica - from ISIS occupation. The offensive may be launched by dropping Egyptian marines from the sea on the Libyan coast around Derna (pop: 100,000), which ISIS has made its provincial capital. ISIS is rushing reinforcements to Libya from Syria and Iraq. The Obama administration objects to a direct Egyptian military operation, as CIA chief John Brennan informed President Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi.

Brennan has launched a major reform program for the CIA with a radical restructuring of separate units for more integration, less wasteful overlaps, and the focusing on resources on the rising menaces of the digital age and cyber warfare.

After five months of silence, Binyamin Netanyahu is again talking to his close advisers about the urgency of a military attack to preempt a nuclear Iran, because the window of opportunity won’t stay open more than a month or two. The domestic opposition he faced last September has ebbed.

Khamenei is at his old tricks of spinning out nuclear negotiations while developing Iran’s nuclear capabilities and grabbing strategic assets in the Middle East. No longer fearing a US military strike, he is now bent on pumping Obama for more concessions on Iran’s nuclear program. He and his advisers decided that the same old tactics which worked for 12 years would do perfectly well for the second Obama administration team, especially if Chuck Hagel and John Brennan are approved as Secretary of Defense and CIA Director.

Zawahiri has evacuated his al Qaeda jihadists from Afghanistan and Pakistan and relocated them in Egypt, Sinai and Syria, out of range of US drones and special forces, which he judges are the two prongs of the incoming CIA chief John’ Brennan’s counterterrorism strategy.

Since the US pulled its fleet away from Syrian shores and the rebels’ arms supplies began drying up, Turkey and Israel assumed defensive postures vis a vis Syria, while the rebels began thinking about reconciliation with Bashar Assad.

Barack Obama’s choice of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan – both champions of his pro-Muslim policy - as Defense Secretary and CIA Director respectively, raises a signpost to his next steps in the Middle East and the war on terror. While Israel is clearly concerned, the coming DEBKA-Net-Weekly out next Friday offers exclusive eye-openers on how those signs are read by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Saudi King Abdullah, Syria’s Bashar Assad, and Ayman Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s leader.
To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weeklyclick here

President Obama sent US Undersecretary for Defense Intelligence Michael Vickers to Cairo Sunday, Jan. 12 to try and revitalize the counter-terror war in Libya and Sinai. debkafile: Obama needs to show action on fighting terror before the murder of US Ambassador Christ Stevens in Benghazi by al Qaeda comes up in congress and hampers the endorsement of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary and John Brennan as Central Intelligence Director, who were nominated Monday.

John Brennan held high-powered talks in Sanaa the day before Al Qaeda’s massive attack killed 100 Yemeni soldiers. It was carried out by a dozen AQAP recruits from Yemen’s Central Security Force working as undercover jihadists.

The Arab revolts are resolving themselves into bids for getting rid of three rulers who refuse to step down, Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, who survived an assassination bid and promises to return as good as new; Syria's Bashar Assad, whom the West allows to survive, and Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, who promises to outlive NATO's attempts on his life.

Far from dispensing with electronic devices and Internet connections as widely reported, photos of Osama bin Laden's fortress-villa in Abbottabad, Pakistan, prove it was equipped with both and therefore vulnerable to penetration and surveillance. Puzzling questions include: Why did the US and Pakistan who must have known where he was not lay hands on him sooner? Why was May 1, 2011 chosen for the operation? And why did US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tie it in with the Arab uprising?